The Hertford Pageant of 1914

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The county town of
Hertford is one of a number of historic English towns which during the
Edwardian period, celebrated its millenary with a grand historic pageant. The Pageant took place in the grounds of
Hertford Castle on six consecutive afternoons during the week of 29 June-4 July
1914. The performers numbered about 600,
the audience totalled 6000, and the cost of staging it came to just under
£2000. It was regarded by the townsfolk as
a veritable triumph, but perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Hertford
Pageant was the fact that it was ever staged at all.

Queen
Elizabeth I, her courtiers and the burgesses of Hertford in Episode VIII (The
visit of Queen Elizabeth to Hertford Castle, 1561). (Photo:
Hertford Museum).

Celebrating Hertford’s Millenary

Hertford was founded
by the Saxon King Edward the Elder in the years 912-14. It lay at a crossing point on the River Lea
which at that time formed the frontier between territories controlled by the
Saxons and Danes. In time the settlement
acquired the status of a Royal Manor.
Then, later in the 10th century, when the country came to be
organised into “shires”, Hertford became the county town of
“Hertford-shire”. In the closing months
of 1066, Duke William of Normandy established a motte and bailey castle beside
the River Lea, just to the west of the town.
It remained a royal stronghold and in 1170, during the reign of Henry
II, it was considerably enlarged and upgraded.
For about 300 years thereafter Hertford Castle was in constant use as a
royal residence. The town itself was
made a Royal Borough incorporate by William I and over the centuries its rights
and privileges were maintained and formalised in a series of Royal Charters.

The Castle fell out of use as a royal residence in the early 1600s. The town fell on hard times for some years
thereafter, but matters gradually improved during the 18th century
and the town prospered as a centre for flour milling, malting, brewing and
tanning. The railway stimulated further
urban development and by 1914 Hertford’s population was about 10,400. Nonetheless, despite being an ancient royal
borough and the administrative centre for the county, the town was much smaller
than other urban centres in the county such as Watford, St Albans and Hitchin.

Amongst Hertford’s
leading citizens in the early 1900s were two brothers, Robert and William
Andrews, whose family had long been builders and timber merchants in the
town. The brothers had a particular
interest in local history and archaeology, and in February 1914 they achieved a
long-held ambition to found a town museum.
William had served on the Town Council since 1895 and in November 1913,
at the age of 74, he was elected Mayor for the third time. No-one could have been better qualified or
better placed to promote the celebration of Hertford’s millenary in 1914 than
William Andrews. Indeed, on being sworn
in as Mayor on 10 November 1913, he mentioned that next year would be
Hertford’s millennial year – a unique occasion, he said, which he hoped would
be observed “in a suitable manner.”

An ad-hoc committee of
interested citizens had been formed during 1913, under the leadership of
William Graveson, a draper and leading member of Hertford’s Quaker
community. The committee garnered a
great deal of information about the millenary celebrations held during the
previous decade in places like Bury St Edmunds, Colchester, Coventry,
Cheltenham, Winchester, Canterbury and Sherborne. In several cases these celebrations had taken
the form of an historic pageant. The committee’s
prime yardstick for such an event, however, was the mammoth St Albans Pageant
held in July 1907, which had been performed on six consecutive days at the site
of the Roman amphitheatre at Verulamium, had boasted a cast of 2000 and had
been watched by some 23,000 people.

At the beginning of
1914, however, nobody in Hertford seems to have been promoting the idea of a
millenary celebration with any sense of urgency. It was not until 27 January that William
Andrews, as Mayor, called a public meeting to discuss the possibilities. Some 30 people attended, drawn mainly from the
town’s more public spirited shopkeepers, brewers and builders, plus two
clergymen and three schoolmasters. With
his antiquarian hat firmly in place, Andrews opened the meeting by reflecting
at length on Hertford’s early history and by stating his desire that the town
“ought to celebrate its millenary in a suitable manner so that it would go down
to posterity.” William Graveson presented
a resumé of the information garnered by his committee. Andrews’ ambitions for Hertford, however,
were very modest. In commenting upon the
St Albans Pageant, he declared that “they could not hope to come up to that, as
it would take a week to celebrate and entail an enormous amount of time and
money in the preparation of it.” This
view was initially accepted by those present at the meeting, and they proceeded
to mull over the possibilities of holding a series of lectures on the history
of the town and putting on a tea for the elementary school children in the
town. It was acknowledged, however, that
the townspeople would view such events as distinctly second rate, and they
concluded that there was really no alternative but to stage some sort of
pageant. From then on their ideas became
steadily more ambitious and they began to think in terms of holding a two-day
event at the end of June or beginning of July.
They then formed themselves into a “Millenary Committee” and resolved to
meet again the following week.

Photograph
taken behind the scenes at the Hertford Pageant. The two men in the foreground are courtiers
in Episode VIII (The visit of Queen Elizabeth to Hertford Castle, 1561) (Photo:
Hertford Museum).

The second meeting,
held on 2 February, attracted far more people, but more importantly it was
addressed by a guest speaker, Charles Henry Ashdown. Ashdown had been a teacher at the St Albans
Grammar School, and was a man of wide-ranging interests, especially in local
history. He had written the text for the
St Albans Pageant while his wife Emily had served as Chief Mistress of the
Robes. They had both enjoyed it so much
that following Charles’ retirement from teaching in 1911, they went on to
assist in the staging of pageants in various parts of the country. Thus when he came to address the meeting at
Hertford, Ashdown spoke with considerable authority on the subject of historic
pageants and, as the Hertfordshire
Mercury commented, what he told them “as to the time, labour, and
expenditure involved in the promotion of pageantry on anything like a grand
scale upset all previously conceived ideas as to the nature of the undertaking
on which they were prepared so light-heartedly to embark.”

He explained that
pageants were notoriously expensive to put on and that a two-day pageant would
not be a viable proposition. Under
favourable conditions, they might clear their expenses with a three-day
pageant. However, if they went for a
six-day pageant, then “they ought to be rolling in wealth.” He also disabused the meeting of any notion
that a pageant could be staged for a few hundred pounds. By its very nature a pageant required a cast
of several hundred people, and their costumes could cost up to a pound apiece. In addition, there was the cost of staging
and properties, of music, printing and advertising, and the fee of the Pageant
Master and Mistress of the Robes. To
meet such expenses, the St Albans’ guarantee fund had started at £2000 and had
increased to £6000. Similar sums had
been required for the pageant staged at Eastbourne. The Westcliffe Pageant had been a smaller
affair and there the guarantee fund had started at £1000. It lasted a week and just about covered
expenses. Thus, if the Millenary
Committee wished to go ahead with a pageant, the first step would be to launch
an appeal for members of the public to guarantee financial support. Then, if the takings failed to cover
expenses, the organisers could call upon their guarantors to make up the
shortfall.

Following Ashdown’s
departure, the assembly elected an Executive Committee and charged it with the
task of issuing a circular appealing for guarantees. During the following weeks the wisdom of
staging a pageant became a subject of much debate amongst the townsfolk. The Mercury
voiced the opinion of “some people” that pageants had lost their freshness and
their power of attraction. Others
thought that the town should mark its millenary with a memorial, such as a
statue of King Edward the Elder, similar to the one of Alfred the Great which
the people of Winchester had erected to celebrate their millenary in 1901. It is also evident, from comments made in the
aftermath of the pageant, that there were a good many “croakers” who claimed
that “sleepy Hertford” could never rise to the occasion.

A total of 1200 circulars
was sent out, and when the Millenary Committee reconvened on 16 February it was
reported that 80 replies had been received, of which 56 had expressed a
willingness to become sureties, the total amount guaranteed being £578. The guarantors included the 4th
Marquess of Salisbury who had made himself surety for £100 and had also agreed
to serve as President of the celebration.
In view of the short time which had elapsed since the circulars were
sent out, the Committee considered the response to be most encouraging. The Mayor had also received detailed figures
from Charles Ashdown which clarified the scale of the task before them. Ashdown estimated that, to stage a “small”
pageant at the Castle would cost £1750, of which £350 could be recouped through
the subsequent sale of materials. Thus
about £1400 would be required, this figure to include a sum of £250 as the fee
of the Pageant Master and Chief Mistress of the Robes. The Committee agreed that this figure, though
substantial, was well within their grasp.
The decision was therefore taken to stage a pageant in the grounds of
Hertford Castle each afternoon of the week beginning Monday 29 June, and to
invite Mr and Mrs Ashdown to act as Pageant Master and Chief Mistress of the
Robes.

Photograph
taken behind the scenes at the Hertford Pageant, showing some of the performers
in Episode VIII (The visit of Queen Elizabeth to Hertford Castle, 1561) (Photo:
Hertford Museum).

Preparing for the Pageant

Having resolved to
stage a full-blown “Pageant of History”, Hertford’s townsfolk had left
themselves just four months in which to get everything ready. The Mercury
later commented that this had caused everybody to work at top pressure, whether
they were “an official, a member of the committee, a performer, or one engaged
in the making of the costumes and properties.”

Venue and Organisation

The venue for both the
preparation and performance of the Pageant was Hertford Castle. William Cecil, the 2nd Earl of
Salisbury, had been granted possession of the Castle by Charles I in 1628, and
it had remained in the hands of the Salisbury family ever since. For much of that time the property had been
used as a grand private residence. Then
in 1911 the 4th Marquess agreed to lease it to the Hertford Corporation
for a period of 75 years at a peppercorn rent of 2/6d a year, the house to be used as municipal offices and the gardens
as a public park. The grounds were
formally opened to the public by Lord Salisbury on Saturday 27 July 1912.

The old house, known
to all as “The Castle”, consisted of a 15th century gatehouse, plus
an elegant wing added in the 1780s. The
former bailey was given over to lawns and flower beds, and enclosed on two
sides by a high wall made of brick and flint, which followed the line of the
original curtain wall. The Town Council
placed a whole suite of rooms on the second floor, plus some rooms in the
basement, at the disposal of the Pageant Master and his co-workers. The Pageant itself would take place on the
large lawn to the east of the Castle, while the spectators would be
accommodated in a covered grandstand that stretched all the way round the east
side of the lawn.

The Executive
Committee remained in being, but under Charles Ashdown’s guidance, its work was
supplemented by a whole raft of sub-committees who were responsible for such
matters as finance, costumes, properties, music, casting, seating arrangements,
the press, printing and advertising. At
the same time the Executive Committee finalised the list of historical episodes
to be portrayed in the Pageant. They were
confined to the Saxon, Medieval and Tudor periods and comprised the following:

I: The Synod of Hartforde, A.D. 673

II: Defeat
of the Danes by Alfred the Great, A.D. 896

III: Re-founding of Hartforde by King Edward the
Elder, A.D. 914

IV: The Siege of Hartforde Castle, 1216

V: The meeting of King John of France and
King David Bruce of Scotland, 1357

VI: Presentation of a Charter to Hertford by
Margaret of Anjou, Queen of King Henry VI, 1451

VII: Suppression of Hertford Priory, 1533

VIII: Visit
of Queen Elizabeth to Hertford Castle, 1561

Photograph
taken behind the scenes at the Hertford Pageant, showing the performers in
Episode II (The defeat of the Danes by Alfred the Great, AD896). The mounted figure is Alfred the Great. (Photo:
Hertford Museum).

Guarantors

The campaign to secure
guarantors for the Hertford Pageant went on throughout the spring of 1914. Wherever a positive response was received,
the Secretary would ask that person to complete a form on which they would
specify the sum they were prepared to guarantee. The Committee also took out a public notice
each week in the Mercury, which listed the names of people who had
agreed to become guarantors and the sum guaranteed. The preamble to these notices was always very
upbeat. It stressed the fact that the
Pageant was most unlikely to incur a loss and that any surplus would be devoted
to the permanent benefit of the Hertford County Hospital.

In conducting its
appeal for guarantors, the Committee had its sights set not only on the more
affluent citizens of Hertford but also on the titled aristocracy and gentry who
between them made up the ranks of “County Society” in Hertfordshire. The notice printed each week in the Mercury was primarily aimed at such
people. For whilst the notice served
ostensibly as a scoreboard as to how the fund was progressing, in reality its
prime purpose was to flatter the vanity of the guarantor and hopefully
encourage his friends or social rivals to come on board. In certain cases, therefore, the sum
guaranteed by an individual was of less note than his name, and such people
were further flattered by being adopted as “Patrons” of the Pageant.

The Committee’s
efforts were to prove successful. The
guarantee fund, which stood at £500 in mid-February, rose steadily to over
£1000 by 5 March and to £1700 by the beginning of April. It ultimately reached a sum of £1915. The Committee was also successful in securing
support from members of County Society.
At the final count the guarantors included a marquess, four earls, a
viscount, 11 baronets; the High Sheriff, Lord Lieutenant, and the Chairmen of
the County Council and the Quarter Sessions; 17 members of the County Council,
58 County Magistrates, 18 clergymen, and four MPs, including the member for the
East Herts Division, Sir John Rolleston.
The Patrons included all those guarantors who were members of the peerage,
baronetage and knightage.

A prospective guarantor would select the sum he or she wished to
guarantee from a range of categories set out on the form provided by the
Secretary. Most people (23%) chose to
guarantee a sum of £5. Those people
guaranteeing a sum of less than £10 could chose from a wide range of
categories. There was clearly a good
deal of snobbery entailed in the matter of guineas or pounds, especially in the
£1-£3 categories, as is demonstrated by the following figures:

The Mayor was the only
Hertford resident to guarantee a substantial sum; of the other 126, 113 (90%)
guaranteed sums of £9 or less. Thus the
bulk of the guarantee fund was received from people living outside the Borough,
the amount guaranteed being split almost equally between those people residing
in the neighbouring town of Ware and in the parishes adjacent to Hertford, and
those living elsewhere in the county.

Volunteer Helpers and Performers

The Committee made several
appeals for volunteers to take part in the performance and to help with making
costumes and props. These appeals met
with a mixed response. The most
ambitious part of the project was manufacturing the costumes, but there seems
to have been no problem in recruiting sufficient women helpers. This was perhaps a measure of the
under-employment which existed at that time amongst middle-class wives and
daughters. Many of them clearly relished
being involved in a project of this kind, and they were consistently praised
for their dedication.

The
leading players in Episode VII (The suppression of Hertford Priory) – the Prior
Thomas Hampton and the King’s Commissioners.
(Photo: Hertford Museum).

The situation was
rather different in the case of the men.
Charles Ashdown was most insistent that the props should be as authentic
as possible and whilst some of them might be made of papier maché, the armour
and weapons had to be fashioned from metal and wood. There were plenty of craftsmen in the town
with the necessary skills, and in late March they came forward in reasonable
numbers. Many of them, however, failed
to return after the Easter holiday. The
reason for this is unclear, but it would seem that for many of the town’s
craftsmen, the working day was quite long enough. Furthermore, once the evenings started to
lengthen, they were easily diverted by sporting activities. The production of the props thus fell behind
and at one point it looked as though the work would have to be completed by
professionals, but somehow the Committee managed to resolve the situation.

Concerns also arose in
regard to the performers. The original
aim was to have a cast of 1000 people.
The local thespians came forward very readily, but after the initial
rush the numbers tailed off. By the
beginning of May only 250 people had come forward. That figure included 150 students from
Haileybury College, who had volunteered to serve as soldiers in Episode IV (The
siege of Hertford Castle). Clearly, if
the Committee were going to achieve their target, they would have to find a way
of attracting people from across the social spectrum. For this to succeed, however, they would need
to secure the active co-operation of the town’s shopkeepers and tradesmen, and
that was no easy task. Any major public
celebration disrupted the normal pattern of trade by drawing away customers and
causing workers and shop assistants to ask for time off. Most tradesmen could cope with a celebration
lasting one or two days, but a pageant lasting six days was a very different
matter.

The
leading performers in Episode III (The re-founding of Hertford by King Edward
the Elder AD914). The mounted figures
are King Edward and his sister Ethelfleda, the Lady of the Mercians. (Photo:
Hertford Museum).

The Committee,
therefore, made various overtures to the business community. They sought to demonstrate how beneficial a
pageant could be to the town’s trade by stressing that all the materials used
for making the costumes and props had been purchased from local suppliers, and
that the printing of publicity materials had all been handled by local
printers. They also stressed that,
wherever a pageant was held, it brought hundreds of visitors to the town and
that following the performance, they thronged to the shops to see the
performers serving behind the counter in their picturesque costumes – a sight
that was especially dear to Americans and visitors from the Continent. More importantly, however, the Committee worked
with representatives of the local traders to find practical ways of addressing
their concerns. One approach was to
allow those workmen who wished to take part in the Pageant to put in overtime
beforehand and clock up sufficient hours to compensate for the time lost during
the performance. Another was to stagger
the times at which employees needed to be absent and to arrange for parts to be
shared between two or three people, thus reducing the number of days on which
an individual would need to have time off.

By these various
stratagems the numbers coming forward to perform in the Pageant steadily
increased, and the Committee eventually managed to secure the services of 469
men, women and children, plus some 150 students from Haileybury. This was subsequently trumpeted as a
considerable achievement, whilst the original target of 1000 performers was
quietly forgotten. Of those 469 persons,
354 (75%) have been positively identified in the 1911 census. Tables 3-4 provide details about their age,
sex and marital status. Table 5 looks at
their social standing, this being measured by the occupation of the main
breadwinner in the family. For this
purpose the table includes just those performers whose families were living in
Hertford in both 1911 and 1914. They
comprised 272 persons, who were contained within 192 households.

The Pageant performers
were thus drawn primarily from the town’s shopkeeper and tradesmen class, and
from families where the main breadwinner was a skilled worker, employed in one
of the town’s flour mills, breweries and printing establishments. Hardly any came from the labouring
class. As with any urban community at
that time, Hertford was riddled with class distinction and petty snobbery. Thus, despite the broad social mix of the
performers, there remained a fine distinction in status between, say, employers
and their foremen, clerks and bench workers, or between the owners of the large
drapery store and the small corner grocery shop or tobacconist. Most of these people had been brought up to
recognise such distinctions and to show respect for their social
superiors. Such ingrained habits would
inevitably prevail in a situation where shop assistants and bench workers found
themselves rubbing shoulders with the town’s leading businessmen and their
families.

Furthermore, the
themes explored in the Pageant tended to emphasise the hierarchical structure
of society and the enormous disparities in wealth and power which existed
between the highest and lowest levels.
Apart from Episode VII (The suppression of Hertford Priory), each
episode featured some grand royal personage, together with his or her courtiers
and officials, and it was those personages who took pride of place in the
scene. The more middling characters such
as the Borough Reeve, Mayor, Bailiff and Burgesses generally occupied a
supporting role. The most lowly figures,
such as the Saxon peasants or medieval townsmen, simply made up the “crowd”.

The
men who served as the defenders of Hertford Castle in Episode IV (The siege of
Hertford Castle 1216) (Photo: Hertford Museum).

As a consequence of
these different factors, the roles taken by the performers in the Pageant
tended to echo their status in contemporary society. This can be seen especially with the persons
chosen to represent royal personages.
The part of Queen Elizabeth I was played by a member of the local
gentry. Alfred the Great was played by Hertford’s
Town Clerk and Solicitor, while other monarchs were played by leading
businessmen in the district. There was
also a certain drole sense of humour behind some of the casting, such as the
casting of the Town Clerk, Alfred Baker, as “Alfred the Great” and his brother Herbert,
a Major in the Hertfordshire Regiment, as Walter de Godardville, Governor of
Hertford Castle during the siege.
Several Councillors were cast in roles which echoed their status in
1914; namely, as members of the Saxon Moot and as the Bailiff and Principal
Burgesses of Tudor Hertford. Such things
would have been much appreciated by the audience. Furthermore, the roles of bishop or priest in
the Pageant were all played by the incumbents of the town’s parish churches.

Pageant Week and After

The Hertford Pageant
duly took place during the week of 29 June-4 July 1914. Apart from a heavy downpour on the Friday,
the weather was magnificent throughout the week. The event had been preceded by considerable
controversy over ticket prices, the cheapest tickets being 3/6d, and seems to have had an effect on
sales, particularly on the Monday.
However, the Pageant was deemed to have been a triumph overall and
indeed the townsfolk clearly felt immensely proud of their achievement. The Executive Committee, in its preliminary
report on the Pageant finances, struck a highly optimistic note. The weeks went by, however, and no final
balance sheet was published. The reason
for this delay was explained in the Mercury
of 15 August. It appeared that certain
claims had been received from “unexpected quarters” for services rendered. The Committee had been under the impression
that these services were rendered on a voluntary basis, but this now appeared
incorrect. Some of the claims were still
under discussion and thus the exact amount of the deficit could not yet be
ascertained. In the event no final
balance sheet was ever published, for the whole matter came to be totally
eclipsed by the outbreak of war on 4 August.

The assassination of
the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, occurred on Sunday
28 June, the day before Pageant Week was due to start in Hertford. The Pageant audience, like the rest of the
British public, probably gave the matter little thought, assuming that it would
all be sorted out in due course. The
assassination, of course, was destined to have far-reaching consequences and a
month after the end of Pageant Week, the country stood on the brink of a
full-scale European war.

The war memorial at
Parliament Square in Hertford bears the names of several men of the town who
took part in the Pageant. Amidst the
turmoil of the post-war period, the Pageant came to be remembered with a
certain poignancy. Furthermore people
everywhere began to feel a deep nostalgia for that long “Edwardian
Summer”. They tended to forget the
fierce controversies which had existed at the time and instead came to look
upon the pre-war period as a golden age.
And for the people of Hertford that golden age came to be symbolised
perfectly in the grand historic pageant which they had worked so hard to put on
and which they had all enjoyed so very much.